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This week, Jessica Fellowes talks to Hanspeter Kipfer (Zurich) about his extensive work in the tech industry, and his more recent transition to support start-ups as advisor and angel investor, focusing on emerging technologies such as AI, Web3 and blockchain. The discussion hones in on the balance between optimism and risk in AI – how prepared is society for the rapid, exponential growth that is coming its way? Hanspeter outlines the challenges but also presents some potential solutions, with the warning that the deadline to put safeguards in place is fast approaching. 

"Primarily by developing systems which are safe. Okay. Sounds really trivial, but as a matter of fact, that's the primary engineering principle. We need to apply everything we release as bulletproof technology wise. In addition, we also need to make things better aligned again with human values. [...] We need to ensure that humans ultimately remain the decision makers in development, and in releasing new functionality and bringing to market new products. We need to embed safeguarding systems, eventually override mechanisms, an emergency button, so to speak. We need to control access to this technology, because if it ends up in the wrong hands it could be misused to the disadvantage of all of us."

This episode was edited by Vanessa Heaney. 

Music by Alex Vickers